Among the witnesses was Kimberly Loring-Heavy Runner, a Blackfeet woman from Montana whose sister, Ashley Loring-Heavy Runner went missing last June at the age of 20.

As is so often the case when Native women go missing, authorities failed to investigate her disappearance.

“I am asking you to recognize that indigenous women matter, and the way our missing and murdered women cases are handled needs to be corrected,” Loring told the Senators on Wednesday. “We are going missing, we are being murdered. We are not being taken seriously.”

To read or hear more about the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women in America and Canada go to these links: